Custom bike fit, Part 1.

Earlier in the week I spent the day down at Baum Cycles with Darren and Nick, working on my bike fit for my custom Baum Wills touring bike. We will tell you all about the two different bikes we will be using later but let me just say that the Wills is full of titanium goodness.

Most people that ride tend to head on down to the local bike shop and pick out a bike of the rack that they like. The salesperson will generally choose the most appropriate frame size based on your height then adjust the seat and handlebars to get you as comfortable as possible, and away you go.

The advantage of a custom built bike is that every aspect from geometry to materials are personally fitted to you, rather than you being fitted to the bike.

The starting point for the custom build process involves spending time riding the fit bike, a slightly odd looking stationary bike that can be adjusted in a variety of ways to fit a person of almost any shape and size.

The contact points between the rider and bike are very important at this stage and will have an effect on the final design, therefore the fit bike will generally be set up with the handlebars, saddle, pedals and shoes that you intend to use.

We have chosen to use Salsa Woodchipper MTB drop bars on our bikes.

Once the fit is complete, Nick will gather all the data from the fit bike and transfer them into bikeCAD on the computer, producing an illustrated version of the bike in this case the Wills drop bar 29er.

From here the final design may go through a little tweaking before Darren transfers all the information to construction drawings in autoCAD. Now it’s off to manufacture.

If you want to read a little more about a custom bike fit and the process go to: http://www.baumcycles.com/custom-fit and take a look. You can also browse some of the bikes Baum have built over the years.

In part 2 of our bike fit post, Garry will talk about his personal experience of the bike fit process and getting a custom bike made to fit compared to purchasing off the shelf.
Darren and Nick will then observe you riding and adjust the fit bike on the spot to customise various aspects of its geometry and work out the optimal rider position depending on the intended use. All of this is then fed into the final design.

Leg 2: Canada and the United States

5612km

12 US States

1 Canadian Province

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I had initially began thinking about the idea behind “The Long Road Tour” in mid 2009 but had never actually sat down and seriously gone over a definite route, I enjoyed looking over options for where I would like to visit if I were to actually do this, Starting in Australia and finishing In the Netherlands opened up two options in terms of direction for us, to head west through Asia and the Middle East, or east across the USA.

Not wanting to push our luck to much while convincing friends and family that our tour was a good idea we decided the USA option was our best option and also opened up charity opportunities with Livestrong and Michael J Fox Foundation in the USA.

We were always going to be heading from the west to the east and New York seemed like the logical end point, but where to start..... I have always wanted to visit Seattle and Portland so our start locations were also settled.

Our initial route across the country had us flying in to LA and jumping on the train to get us to our start point in Portland, then up to Seattle before we head east towards New York, via Lake Michigan and Toronto but after reviewing our route we decided to make a few changes mainly to the start and end of the leg.

We will now be starting our North American leg in Vancouver Canada, and through a mix of riding and ferries will make our way to Seattle via Vancouver Island, then down to Portland before heading east. Starting in Canada eliminated the need for multiple border crossings to and from the USA which should make things a little less complicated.

Now I tend to spend a little too much time looking over various cities and towns that we may pass through or stop in, and it was this that led to changes made to the later part of the US leg, Having moved our time in Canada to the start of the leg and reading a number of unsavoury things about some of the locations we would be passing through on our way to Toronto (Now I'm sure these places are actually not that bad, maybe I should stop reading so much otherwise we may not go anywhere.), we decided to move our route a little further south bellow the great lakes and head directly east to New York.

The new route will also hopefully allow us to meet up with some people who have followed us from quite early on.

We are also hoping to hold some sort of fundraising event at the end of our American leg in New York to benefit our US charities.

From there it is off to Leg 3 of the tour..... Europe!

Leg 1: Australia

2720km

   3 States

1 Territory

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The Australian leg is the first and a very important leg to us, it is where we live and grew up, we both have, and have had numerous friends and family members that have been effected by both Cancer and Parkinson's diseases and hope to do all that we can to support our local charities, Cure Cancer Australia and Parkinson's NSW along the way.

During this leg of our journey we plan to visit a couple of key locations. Locations close to us and which hold meaning.

The tour will be kicked off in Ballarat the home of Jason but more importantly his father David, a sufferer of Parkinson's and the seed that started the idea of this trip.

During the first day of the tour we will be joined on the road by a number of friends and supporters who will ride the 100km route from Ballarat to Geelong to see us off on our journey. While in Geelong we intend to catch up with our bicycle sponsor Baum Cycles who are based there.

We then head south to catch the ferry to the Mornigton Peninsula and on through Gippsland in south east Victoria before we turn up into NSW via the coast and a few hills (hmmmmm…. Hills). Along the way we deviate away from the coastal roads and head inland towards Cootumundra, the home of Garry's late grand mother who battled with cancer for many years without ever giving up. They say the will is stronger than the body. Garry's grandmother proved this day in day out. She will be missed.

After Coota, its back towards the coast and onto Sydney, the home of Garry and a party celebrating that we actually survived the journey so far, before loading the bikes up once more and making our way upwards again. Destination, Brisbane.


Bellow is our new map for leg 1 of our tour, our home leg in Australia.

Through out this leg the plan is to drop into as many schools and support groups as physically possible. This way we can give encouragement to those that are fighting their own battles with these diseases while also providing awareness to all those that have yet to, and we hope never have to, experience what these diseases can do to individuals and families.

Leg one will take us through 3 states and 1 territory in 31days covering a total of 2720km, but this is only the beginning of our journey, next stop or should I say start.... Vancouver Canada and Leg 2 of the tour across the USA.

So that’s it for now. Till next time.

Where have we been...

Bit of a slow month for us update wise but only because there was a heap of good quality bike racing on with the "Tour de France" and it's thrills and spills, the Mountain Bike World Cup and finally the BMX World Champs. Out of all that the Aussies did, I would say, well. Cadel Evans got his first Tour victory (the first Australian to win it) and our Junior Women now have a BMX world champ. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi.... After all that excitement we plain and simply were exhausted, but as the saying goes, it's time to get back in the saddle.

What's been happening ...... Hmmmmm. Well Jason's been using his graphical skills and tinkering away with the tour maps trying as always to find the best way across each country (including staying away from bears and mountain lions). At one stage I believe his mapping pen slipped because I'm sure we weren't heading to Brisbane, Australia, but then I was informed that it wasn't a mistake and yes we were going to the Sunshine state.

We've also been looking at some new phones and mobile devices which we will be taking with us. The idea was to try and use mobiles to update you all on what we are up to, including posting pics and vids. At the moment we are 75% certain the Samsung Galaxy S2 will do everything we need but we are holding off a little to check out some of the other competition. If you have any opinions on these or other phones let us know especially some of our international friends. We would love to know how they go in the US and EU.